Biography

American clergyman and inspirational leader of the civil rights movement. A symbol of the struggle against black segregation in the American South, he won the Kennedy Peace Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Galvanizing black Americans into action through his electrifying oratory skills, he rose to become a legend and national hero in his own time.

Growing up in a pious, proud and progressive black community in segregated Atlanta, King was the son of Alberta and Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister at the Ebeneezer Baptist Church. Living in a family of black Brahmins he never experienced poverty, yet he continuously heard his father preach from his pulpit, "I don't care how long I have to live with this system. I will never accept it."

King's rhetorical ability showed early. A pastor's son of whom much was expected, he won an oratorical contest sponsored by the black Elks in 1944. Programmed from his early youth to follow in his father's and grandfather's footsteps in the ministry, by his teens he was uncomfortable with the emotionalism of fundamental Baptist services and sought a more liberal perspective. Enrolling in Morehouse College in Atlanta, he vacillated between choosing a career as a doctor or a lawyer and a bitter seed was planted about his Baptist roots. "I wondered whether religion, with its emotionalism in Negro churches, could be intellectually respectable as well as emotionally satisfying." With his spiritual perspective enhanced by the liberal theologians at Morehouse, he enrolled at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was one of 11 blacks in a student population of 90. Manifesting his innate sense of leadership, he became student body president and class valedictorian. He was ordained a minister in his father's church in 1947. Upon applying to Boston University for graduate work, his professors wrote "His work is of the highest grade" and "He will probably become a big strong leader among his people."

In 1955 at age 26, after refusing to be heir apparent to his father's pulpit at Ebeneezer Baptist in Atlanta, King's first position was at the prestigious Dexter Baptist Church at Montgomery, Alabama. When seamstress Rose Parks refused to move to the back of the bus on December 1st of that same year, King began his sermon to a church full of agitated supporters of her cause, four days after her courageous act. "You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression." Individual cheers gave way to a resounding din within the church walls and King walked into history that day as the delegated spokesman for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When the Montgomery buses finally began to operate on a non-segregated basis 381 days later, King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, giving him a sound base from which to operate his vast congregation of everyday soldiers for civil rights. His philosophy of passive resistance led to his frequent arrests and tours through the Bible Belt, where he became known as "Alabama's Modern Moses." The Southern student lunch counter sit-in of 1960, the Freedom Riders of 1961, marches in Birmingham, AL 1963, St. Augustine, FL 1964 and Selma, AL in 1965 put King in the national deadlines as a civil rights activist. His greatest coup was the March on Washington in 8/28/1963, where 200,000 people gathered to demand their civil rights and hear King make his famous speech, "I have a dream....." For upholding his allegedly radical views he was stoned, physically attacked and his house was bombed.

King's outstanding success in uniting his people for a common cause made its ripple effect in American society, rendered him suspect in the eyes of the FBI, who rigorously followed and taped King, especially in his extra-marital affairs. "I'm away from home 25-27 days a month. Extra-marital sex is a form of anxiety reduction," he said. In 1964 an FBI agent sent a package to King at the headquarters of the Southern Leadership Conference, containing a letter urging King to commit suicide and a reel of tape with King having sex. An identical anonymous package made its way to King's wife, who played the tape and read the letter which stated, "King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You better take your life before your filthy abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation."

Undaunted, King pressed forward on his mission to free people everywhere from the chains of oppression. As society grew more militant in the mid '60s, King's interests widened to the Viet Nam War and those living in poverty. His plans for a Poor People's March on Washington in 1968 were interrupted by a sanitation workers' strike in Memphis, Tennessee. On the evening of 4/03/1968, King delivered his legendary speech to supporters at the Mason Street Temple: "I have been to the mountaintop......I see the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but mine eyes have seen the glory."

The following evening, while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, he was shot to death at 6:01 PM EST by allegedly lone assassin James Earl Ray.

King married Coretta Scott in 1957. They had four children, Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther King III, Dexter and Bernice Albertine. Yolanda, the eldest, died at age 51 on May 15, 2007 in Santa Monica, CA. She reportedly suffered from a heart problem.